Devon Archer Testimony Not Exculpatory of Joe Biden – Spin in the wake of Devon Archer’s congressional testimony has sought to insulate President Joe Biden from the most potentially damaging aspect of his testimony, namely that Burisma executives pressured Hunter Biden to call his father.
“But Archer testified having no knowledge of wrongdoing by Joe Biden to alter U.S. policy to benefit the business of Hunter Biden. ‘I have no basis to know if he altered policy to benefit his son,’ Archer said. ‘I have no knowledge,’” USA Today columnist Joey Garrison writes. “Archer said that includes no reason to believe that then-Vice President Biden called for the termination of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin for any reason other than to pursue Biden’s anti-corruption policy in Ukraine. Republicans accuse Joe Biden of calling for Shokin’s removal in exchange for payments to protect Burisma.”
Garrison makes an argument from silence here. All Archer said was that he had no knowledge. Interviewing Pozharskyi and Zlochevsky would be the only means of finding out what Joe Biden said and whether the allegation about the $5 million bribe is true.
Archer Claimed Influence Peddling Happened With Burisma Call to Joe Biden
“The testimony of Devon Archer, a fellow board member of Hunter Biden at the Ukrainian energy firm Bursima, undercut the build-up from the committee’s chairman, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., who said this week Archer’s testimony made Republicans’ bribery allegations against Joe Biden ‘more credible,’” Garrison writes.
What Archer actually said is that he found out that Burisma executives Vadym Pozharskyi and Mykola Zlochevsky pressured Hunter Biden to call his father in response to pressure from the Ukrainian government on Burisma. Archer noted that he found out about the discussion second-hand from Pozharskyi and that he never discussed the content of the call with Hunter Biden following a Burisma board dinner in Dubai.
Archer told the committee, “The request was I think they were getting pressure and they requested Hunter, you know, help them with some of that pressure … The request — you know, basically the request is like, can D.C. help? But there were not — you know, I’m not going to — there were not — it wasn’t like — there weren’t specific, you know, can [Joe Biden] help? It was – it’s always this amorphous, can we get help in D.C.?”
He said yes when a committee lawyer asked Archer if what Hunter Biden was being asked for involving Joe Biden “could cause off some serious alarm bells for influence peddling, conflicts of interest.”
What Counsel Did Joe Biden Give Hunter’s Associates?
Garrison claims the bribery claim is “unsupported” when he should be saying that thus far the claim has not been corroborated by a second source.
“Archer testified Monday that Hunter Biden put his father, Joe Biden, on the speaker phone about 20 times to speak with Burisma executives over Archer’s 10-year business partnership with Hunter. This includes times when Archer, Hunter Biden and other business associates were gathered at dinners in Paris and Beijing,” Garrison writes. “’There are touch points and contact points that I can’t deny happened.’ Archer said, referring to contacts with Biden while he was vice president. ‘But nothing of material was discussed.’ He said some of the things Hunter and Joe Biden discussed on speakerphone were, ‘Where are you, how’s the weather, how’s the fishing?”
Joe Biden was the ‘Chairman’ of Biden, Inc.
He correctly states that on other occasions during which Joe Biden met with Archer and other business associates, no business deals were discussed; however, context is missing that Joe Biden was the “chairman” and the object of Biden Inc. He did not need to be the dealmaker.
“There are hundreds of data points that Joe Biden was acting in – in a capitalistic term, I would say the chairman,” former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski told host Tucker Carlson last Fall, noting the then vice president’s role was largely ceremonial at such meetings.
Archer agreed.
“I can definitively say that at particular dinners and at particular meetings he knew there were business associates, or if I was there I was a business associate too,” Archer told Carlson following his testimony. “I don’t know if it was an orchestrated call or not. It certainly was powerful though, because if you are sitting with a foreign business person and you hear the vice president’s voice that’s a prize enough … It’s an abuse of soft power.”
The effort to insulate Joe Biden from damaging testimony relies on selective omission. Investigations take time. Republicans are just in the early stages. But, at least for the moment, things don’t look good for President Joe Biden.
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
From 19FortyFive
